Julia Ward Howe

Portrait of Julia Ward Howe, by John Elliott, 1925

She attended lectures, studied foreign languages, and wrote plays and dramas. Howe had published essays on Goethe, Schiller and Lamartine before her marriage in the New York Review and Theological Review.[2] Her first volume of poetry, Passion-Flowers was published anonymously in 1853. The book collected personal poems and was written without the knowledge of her husband, who was then editing the Free Soil newspaper The Commonwealth.[16] Her second anonymous collection, Words for the Hour, appeared in 1857.[2] She went on to write plays such as Leonora, The World's Own, and Hippolytus. These works all contained allusions to her stultifying marriage.[2]

She went on trips including several for missions. In 1860, she published A Trip to Cuba, which told of her 1859 trip. It had generated outrage from William Lloyd Garrison, an abolitionist, for its derogatory view of Blacks. Howe believed it was right to free the slaves but did not believe in racial equality.[17] Several letters on High Newport society were published in the New York Tribune in 1860, as well.[2]

Howe's being a published author troubled her husband greatly, especially due to the fact that her poems many times had to do with critiques of women's roles as wives, her own marriage, and women's place in society.[18][19] Their marriage problems escalated to the point where they separated in 1852. Samuel, when he became her husband, had also taken complete control of her estate income. Upon her husband's death in 1876, she had found that through a series of bad investments, most of her money had been lost.[4]

Howe's writing and social activism were greatly shaped by her upbringing and married life. Much study has gone into her difficult marriage and how it influenced her work, both written and active.[20]

In the early 1870s, Howe was nominated by William Claflin the governor of Massachusetts as justice of the peace. However, there were uncertainties surrounding her appointment, as many believed women were not fit to hold office. In 1871, the Massachusetts supreme court made the decision that women could not hold any judicial offices without explicit authorization from the legislature, thereby nullifying Howe's appointment to justice of the peace. This led to activists petitioning for legislation allowing women to hold office, separate from legislating women's suffrage. Women's supporters believed that petitioning for officeholding before petitioning for a women's suffrage amendment would expedite women's involvement in politics.[21]

She was inspired to write "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" after she and her husband visited Washington, D.C., and met Abraham Lincoln at the White House in November 1861. During the trip, her friend James Freeman Clarke suggested she write new words to the song "John Brown's Body", which she did on November 19.[22] The song was set to William Steffe's already existing music and Howe's version was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in February 1862. It quickly became one of the most popular songs of the Union during the American Civil War.

Howe produced eleven issues of the literary magazine, Northern Lights, in 1867. That same year she wrote about her travels to Europe in From the Oak to the Olive. After the war, she focused her activities on the causes of pacifism and women's suffrage. By 1868, Julia's husband no longer opposed her involvement in public life, so Julia decided to become active in reform.[2] She helped found the New England Women's Club and the New England Woman Suffrage Association. She served as president for nine years beginning in 1868.[23] In 1869, she became co-leader with Lucy Stone of the American Woman Suffrage Association. Then, in 1870, she became president of the New England Women's Club. After her husband's death in 1876, she focused more on her interests in reform. In 1877 Howe was one of the founders of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union in Boston.[24] She was the founder and from 1876 to 1897 president of the Association of American Women, which advocated for women's education.[25] Unlike other suffragists at the time, Howe supported the final version of the Fifteenth Amendment, which had omitted the inclusion of language originally barring discrimination against women as well as people of color.[21] Her reason for supporting this version of the Fifteenth Amendment was that "she viewed black men's suffrage as the priority."[21]

In 1872, she became the editor of Woman's Journal, a widely-read suffragist magazine founded in 1870 by Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell.[26] She contributed to it for twenty years.[2] That same year, she wrote her "Appeal to womanhood throughout the world", later known as the Mother's Day Proclamation,[27] which asked women around the world to join for world peace. (See Category:Pacifist feminism.) She authored it soon after she evolved into a pacifist and an anti-war activist. In 1872, she asked that "Mothers' Day" be celebrated on the 2nd of June.[28][29][30][31] Her efforts were not successful, and by 1893 she was wondering if the 4th of July could be remade into "Mothers' Day".[28] In 1874, she edited a coeducational defense titled Sex and Education.[23] She wrote a collection about the places she lived in 1880 called Modern Society. In 1883, Howe published a biography of Margaret Fuller. Then, in 1885 she published another collection of lectures called Is Polite Society Polite? ("Polite society" is a euphemism for the upper class.) In 1899 she published her popular memoirs, Reminiscences.[2] She continued to write until her death.

Is Polite Society Polite and Other Essays by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe

In 1881, Howe was elected president of the Association for the Advancement of Women. Around the same time, Howe went on a speaking tour of the Pacific coast and founded the Century Club of San Francisco. In 1890, she helped found the General Federation of Women's Clubs, to reaffirm the Christian values of frugality and moderation.[2] From 1891 to 1893, she served as president for the second time of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. Until her death, she was president of the New England Woman Suffrage Association. From 1893 to 1898 she directed the General Federation of Women's Clubs, and headed the Massachusetts Federation of Women's Clubs.[2] Howe spoke at the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago reflecting on the question, What is Religion?.[32] In 1908 Julia was the first woman to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a society; its goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art.[33]

• Passion-Flowers (1854)
• Words for the Hour (1857)
• From Sunset Ridge: Poems Old and New (1898)[25]
• Later Lyrics (1866)
• At Sunset (published posthumously, 1910)[25]

• The Hermaphrodite. Incomplete, but probably composed between 1846 and 1847. Published by University of Nebraska Press, 2004
• From the Oak to the Olive (travel writing, 1868)[47]
• Modern Society (essays, 1881)[25]
• Margaret Fuller (Marchesa Ossoli) (biography, 1883)[25]
• Woman's work in America (1891)
• Is Polite Society Polite? (essays, 1895)[25]
• Reminiscences: 1819–1899[48] (autobiography, 1899)[25]